As I say Adam, I’m not terrifically au fait with the exact nature of developments in Scotland – in particular what stage we’re at visa vie the setting or revising of legal aid budgets for the imminent future. Will keep an eye out for devolved details.

I nearly added a disclaimer to that effect at the top, before I re-posted, and in retrospect should have done.

If you fancy writing us a piece on legal aid in Scotland, as soon as info becomes clearer (or, as we’ve said before, anything that takes your fancy) then this would be most excellent.

Adam

]]>By: Lallands Peat Worrierhttp://bright-green.org/2010/07/07/cuts-to-legal-aid-risk-its-collapse/#comment-13856
Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:58:53 +0000http://brightgreenscotland.org/?p=748#comment-13856Since this is Bright Green ~Scotland~, just one or two wee points of clarification.

The Legal Services Commission not the UK-wide body, but merely deals with these matters in England and Wales. Up north, the relevant body is the Scottish Legal Aid Board. Moreover, the English and Welsh distinction between barristers and solicitors is not precisely of a piece with Scottish advocates and solicitors (and we ought not to exclude solicitor advocates from our calculations, these days). The distinction isn’t just in the name, but potentially has implications for working practices – and legal aid payments.

Although I’m no expert and can’t vouch for the Scottish situation in any substantive or shockingly revelatory detail, I do know that Scots legal aid budgets are set by Scottish Ministers. As a result, there is a devolved discussion to be had on these matters, in the context of Westminster fiscal slicing.

What I would say is that even if lawyers, on the whole, did receive extremely high wages, that would still not be grounds for cutting legal aid.

As you very rightly point out, the purpose of legal aid is to provide access to legal representation for people who would not otherwise be able to access it. That means paying lawyers’ time, so that they spend time on cases that would not otherwise get legal representation. Basically, it means paying lawyers’ time at cost.

It’s no good saying “because lawyers earn lots of money, we’ll only pay them minimum wage for legal aid”, even if it is in fact true that lawyers earn lots. That will never encourage a lawyer to spend adequate time on a case that requires adequate time to be spent on it. When child custody cases are rushed, and information isn’t processed properly, and evidence isn’t assembled properly, it’s children and domestic abuse victims/survivors who lose out because they don’t get represented properly, and that means that, as you point out, preventable child abuse situations will become more common.

(Sure in a situation without massive pay disparities, I’d be less inclined to make this argument. But in this situation, I think we don’t even need to defend the lawyer who earns less and works long hours. We just need to argue that that’s what lawyers cost.)